Even if the number of amputations per year has decreased with time, limb salvage surgery may not offer a better functional outcome and health-related quality of life for young people with bone and soft tissue sarcomas of the lower limb.

The use of radiotherapy (RT) for treatment of breast cancer was found to increase the risk of the development of soft tissue sarcomas, in particular angiosarcomas and malignant fibrous histiocytomas, for up to 23 years, although the overall risk was still low. There was no difference in survival noted between RT-induced and non–RT-induced angiosarcomas.

Despite using only 3 variables, the Stanford Online Calculator was found to perform on a par with the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center and Mayo nomograms for the prediction of nonsentinel lymph node metastasis in sentinel lymph node–positive breast cancer patients.

Index cases with inconclusive genetic test results were less likely to have been screened at 12-month follow-up and less likely to share their test results with a healthcare provider at 6-month follow-up. Index cases who disclosed their test results to their children were more likely to have been screened at 12-month follow-up, after controlling for mutational status.

Individually predictive histologic features were incorporated into the American Joint Committee on Cancer tumor-node-metastasis classification of anatomic extent, and the simplest combination of tumor characteristics predicting survival was determined in 137 patients who underwent resection of pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma with curative intent. A combination of tumor differentiation, lymphatic invasion within the tumor, and local extrapancreatic extension was found to predict survival after pancreatectomy.

In a phase 2 trial of sorafenib, 27 patients with advanced urothelial cancer after chemotherapy for metastatic disease received 400 mg twice daily. Therapy was relatively well tolerated; however, no objective responses were seen. The 4-month progression-free survival rate was 9.5%; median overall survival of the group was 6.8 months.

Bladder cancer is the fifth most common cancer, but funding for it is low compared with other common malignancies, resulting in reduced research opportunities. A concerted effort to align bladder cancer advocates, clinicians, and urologic organizations is essential to define the greatest needs in bladder cancer and to develop related solutions.

Neoadjuvant chemotherapy and radical cystectomy with negative surgical margins for patients with bladder cancer with pathologic P0 and lymph node negative–disease were found to correlate with improved survival. A combination of baseline clinical stage and postcystectomy pathologic stage may better predict survival.

In this examination of the safety of fertility-conserving surgery in premenopausal women with epithelial ovarian cancers, the results indicated that ovarian and uterine-conserving surgery were safe in young women who had stage IA and IC ovarian cancer.

Avascular necrosis (AVN) is a debilitating condition reported after hematopoietic cell transplantation (HCT), resulting in significant morbidity. The authors found an increased risk of AVN in allogeneic HCT recipients with the characteristics male sex and exposure to cyclosporine, FK506, prednisone, and mycophenolate mofetil, thereby identifying subpopulations that could benefit from targeted screening.

The current study was a follow-up of a phase 2, open-label study of 150 patients with chronic-phase chronic myeloid leukemia who were resistant to imatinib and were randomized (2:1) to receive either dasatinib at a dose of 70 mg twice daily (n = 101) or high-dose imatinib at a dose of 800 mg (400 mg twice daily; n = 49). After 2 years of follow-up, dasatinib demonstrated durable responses and improved response and progression-free survival rates relative to high-dose imatinib.

Prognostic factors were identified for patients with advanced biliary tract adenocarcinoma receiving first-line palliative chemotherapy. These factors were used for the management of individual patients and to guide the design of future clinical trials.

The objective of this retrospective study was to identify the factors associated with improved outcome after treatment for stage III nonsmall cell lung cancer. The results indicated that the patients who were able to undergo resection appeared to have improved outcome after induction chemoradiation.

Hormone replacement therapy has been reported to be associated with decreased survival in women with lung cancer. The objective of this study was to examine if this association exists in a postmenopausal rural female population.

This systematic examination of the effect of aging on the incidence of cutaneous malignant melanoma revealed divergent (bimodal) early-onset and late-onset cancer pathways. The authors concluded that future analytical studies should carefully consider this age interaction for both established and suspected melanoma risk factors.

Immunophenotypic expression patterns demonstrated leiomyosarcomas clustered into groups of neoplasms that trended toward certain anatomic sites of origin and gender. Most notably, there was a group of estrogen receptor-positive uterine and retroperitoneal tumors from women that often expressed Wilms tumor-1 protein, which suggested a common line of differentiation as well as potential therapeutic targets.

The authors have provided the most comprehensive analysis of bladder cancer to date using a data set that includes patient demographics, comorbidities, and clinical variables. They demonstrated that significant racial, gender, and socioeconomic status disparities exist in bladder cancer survival.

The objectives of this study were to confirm whether racial disparity exists with regard to outcome between black and white women with ovarian cancer and to identify factors associated with the administration of adjuvant treatment that had an impact on survival. In a retrospective review of 97 black women and 1392 white women who had International Federation of Gynecology and Obstetrics stage III or IV ovarian carcinoma, no differences were observed in the relative dose (0.90 vs 0.89), relative time (1.02 vs 0.99), or relative dose intensity (0.90 vs 0.91) received between black patients and white patients, respectively, and there was no difference in clinical outcome between black women and white women with advanced stage epithelial ovarian cancer when they received similar treatment as participants in a Gynecologic Oncology Group clinical trial.

Incidence and survival rates of pediatric rhabdomyosarcoma and its 2 major subtypes were analyzed using Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results Program data for the period from 1975 to 2005. Age, sex, and racial/ethnic differences in both incidence and survival were observed, further supporting unique underlying etiologies for these tumors.

Parent-child communication remained stable after a parental cancer diagnosis; patients' and spouses' functioning improved. Parents' functioning in the first year after cancer is only limitedly affected by parent-adolescent communication patterns.

Children with pediatric acute lymphoblastic leukemia were found to perform poorly on select measures of attention and executive control, and this performance to be influenced by sex and treatment intensity.